Big and brash, very big and very brash

Rating: Null/10 (22 July 2013)

As summer blockbusters go, you don't get much bigger and much brasher than this and the whole thing is so visually bombastic that I'm glad I did not choose to see the 3D version. The pitch to the money boys who provided the $180M cost of the movie must have been simple: "It's Godzilla meets Transformers - but bigger, much bigger". So the threat comes from gigantic sea creatures called Kaiju (Japanese for 'strange beast') who emerge from a crack in the Pacific floor to smash up seaboard cities like San Francisco and Sydney, while the attempt to beat them takes the form of enormous robots called Jaegers (German for 'hunter') manned by two 'pilots' who need to be neurally connected (much like my wife and her twin sister), most of whom are battling internal demons as well as those ever-more colossal Kaiju.
The whole thing is directed and co-written by the Mexican Guillermo del Toro who crafted the wonderful "Pan's Labyrinth" and he has made sure that he has a cast drawn from the United States, Britain, Australia and Japan (the only woman) and located the fight back in Hong Kong to maximise the worldwide audience draw. The pacing is excellent with a really strong opening and then a gradual build up to a climax on an oceanic scale but, as so often with blockbusters, the whole thing is a bit too long. The special effects are fun, although the beasts are not as well 'drawn' as the robots, and, as well as plenty of drama and destruction, there is humour, including a pair of scientists who are human versions of R2D2 and C3PO. It's silly but entertainingly so.
Note: early on in the credits, there is a short extra scene.